The Terrapins women’s basketball team gathered at Xfinity Center with a group of fans Monday night to learn its seeding in the NCAA Tournament. When the Terps flashed up on the TV as a No. 2 seed in the Lexington region, coach Brenda Frese and a few players stood up and cheered as the fans erupted.
The Terps, competing in their sixth straight NCAA tournament, will play No. 15-seed Iona on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and host the first two rounds of the tournament at Xfinity Center.
“It’s special to be able to potentially play your first two games in front of all your friends,” Frese said. “We’ve worked really hard to secure that home-court advantage. So for us, we feed off the energy of our home crowd.”
If the Terps advance past Iona, which won the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship, they will play the winner of No. 7-seed Washington/No. 10-seed Penn on Monday.
Notre Dame is the No. 1 seed in their region with No. 3-seed Kentucky and No. 4-seed Stanford rounding out the top teams.
Guard Chloe Pavlech said “it’s a really strong region,” but she was happy not to see three-time defending national champion Connecticut as the No. 1 seed in Lexington.
“A little bit of a sigh of relief,” Pavlech said.” I’m not going to lie.”
The Terps, who won the program’s lone national championship in 2006, are looking for their third straight Final Four appearance. In last season’s tournament, the Terps advanced to the final weekend before falling to eventual national champion Connecticut.
Guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough said she’s been waiting for her chance to try to get back to the sport’s final weekend since that 81-58 loss to the Huskies in Tampa, Florida.
“It’s never a good time when your season is cut short and it was a bad taste in my mouth,” Walker-Kimbrough said. “It’s just not something I don’t want to feel again.”
The junior reached the semifinals as a freshman, too, losing to Notre Dame. So she could have a chance at redemption against them before reaching the Final Four.
But Walker-Kimbrough made one thing clear, this tournament is being played for the Terps’ four seniors — Pavlech, Brene Moseley, Malina Howard and Tierney Pfirman.
“It’s a bittersweet moment just being able to play another game,” Pfirman said. “It’s a great feeling but you never know when that’s going to come to an end. Just hosting here, it’s a great thing to come back and play in front of our fans one last time.”